CRN

94035

Distribution

D

Course No.

RUS 101

Title

Elementary Russian I

Professor

Lindsay Watton

Schedule

Tu Wed Th Fr 9:00 am - 9:50 am LC 206

For students with little or no previous knowledge of Russian. An introduction to the fundamentals of spoken and written Russian which emphasizes conversational, reading and written proficiency and expression. Audio-visual and computer materials will be an integral part of the learning process. Elementary Russian will be followed by an intensive 8 credit course in the spring semester and a four credit summer language and culture program in St. Petersburg, Russia. See description of RUS 106 in the Spring 2001 on-line catalog for more information on this opportunity. RUS 101 will also be offered in an immersion format during the January 2001 intersession.

CRN

94036

Distribution

D

Course No.

RUS 201

Title

Intermediate Russian I

Professor

Marina Kostalevsky

Schedule

Tu Wed Th 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm LC 120

In addition to reviewing the basic principles of Russian morphology and syntax, this second-year Russian course pursues major topics in the pragmatics of Russian, such as verbal aspect, prefixation, and speech etiquette. Videos and a variety of original texts will be incorporated to further the goals of comprehension and practical proficiency.

CRN

94038

Distribution

C/D

Course No.

RUS 277

Title

Stalin's Russia: History and Fictions

Professor

Gennady Shkliarevsky / Lindsay Watton

Schedule

Tu Fr 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 310

8 credits This team-taught interdisciplinary course will consider in depth Soviet Russian culture from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. This historical period witnessed Stalin's ascent to power, the implementation of collectivization and industrialization, political purges, the evolution of the forced-labor-camp system (Gulag) and World War II. In contrast to conventional approaches that treat Stalinism as a political phenomenon and focus on political, social and economic developments of the period, this course will examine Stalinism as a cultural phenomenon. Believing with Max Weber that "man is an animal suspended in the web of meanings that he himself has spun," we will discuss Stalinism as a cultural system that represented a peculiar fusion of tradition and modernity. In addition to social, political and economic aspects, we will explore the ways in which reality was constructed and represented artistically through fiction, painting, photography, film, music and architecture. Particular attention will be paid to the ideology and aesthetics of public ritual and the significance of popular culture. Our topics will include the relationship between art and propaganda from the early Soviet avant-garde to Socialist Realism, the utopian novel, the theater of the absurd, memoirs and literature of the Gulag, and artistic portrayals of Stalin. We will devote special attention to the purges of the 1930s, both as a political policy and a symbolic eschatological experience which marked the apocalyptic end of the old and the beginning of the new, socialist world, as well as the phenomenon of the cult of personality. A film series will be part of the course.

CRN

94037

Distribution

B/D

Course No.

RUS 408

Title

Love Stories in Prose & Poetry

Professor

Marina Kostalevsky

Schedule

Wed 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 306

Close reading of selected short stories and poems of Russian writers from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. Examination of artistic meditations on paradoxes of love, on erotic behavior, on psychological and cultural conflicts of the period. Special emphasis on the role of language and literary form, as the erotic themes are developed in texts by Karamzin, Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Gippius, Kuzmin, Blok, Nabokov, Tolstaya, and Petrushevskaya. Conducted in Russian.